On and off over the years I have heard rumors that John Joseph was in the process of writing a book about his life. When I have had the pleasure of talking to him in person, he has always sworn it was coming soon. Finally, last year it came out and I have to say it was one of the best books I read last year.

Joseph, the singer of the infamous New York City hardcore band the Cro-Mags, tells a tale of an awful, seriously heart breaking, childhood. By far this was the most compelling portion of the book; his stories of growing up bouncing from foster home to foster home and the abuse and alienation involved are both troubling and inspiring. I listened to Joseph’s audio book adaptation of this while running a lot last summer and it made me want to really push harder and harder and harder…

Many readers will want to skip ahead to his involvement with the eighties hardcore scene, and there is plenty of that. Stories about Bad Brains, trying to turn Ian Mackaye onto vegetarianism (people always forget Mackaye was pretty late on that…1985 I believe?), and hanging around people like Mackaye, Henry Rollins, and others are told well and offer some new insights plus a lot of material I already had heard before.

Joseph’s time in the Cro-Mags only takes up the end portion of the book. There have been so many conflicting stories/hearsay/etc about this band that it is hard to take anything without a large grain of salt. That said, I trust Joseph’s stories of being screwed over by managers, band members, and venues a lot more than, let’s say, other members of this band.

I listened to the audio version and according to others there is a lot more material in the printed version. Well worth your time.

Recently read Armageddon In Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut.

What could the final book Vonnegut ever publishes is a mixed bag of newer and some of Vonnegut’s oldest, previously unpublished, material. The newer work, including a hilarious speech, has the same Vonnegut style and charm as his excellent Timequake and A Man Without A Country. The older works, mostly fictional and non-fictional recollections of his time in World War II are a mixed bag. They are all good, no doubt, and very sadly intense in their nature, but a lot of it is very raw and not quite the Vonnegut we would come to know later. This isn’t to say Armageddon In Retrospect isn’t worth checking out, just that some of it is sub par for my very high expectations.

I read this via the audio book. Rip Torn does a wonderful reading of the book. This is a good example of an audio reading really emphasizing the better qualities of the writing.

Recently read: The Audacity Of Hope by Barack Obama.

Early this summer I picked up a cheap first edition and the audio book of Obama’s second book. He has such a nice speaking voice that I figured the audio version would be a pleasant experience.

The book itself is alright. Some parts are dull, inside baseball, stuff about life in Washington I could care less about. Parts where he discusses policy points were nice, even if I don’t agree with a lot of them.

Overall, I’m not impressed and did not vote for him (I voted for one of the real, not make believe, Socialists on my state’s ballot). So far, almost a month into his administration, I am even less impressed by it. There are plenty of other sites to do detailed analysis of that, however.

As an aside, I am growing tired of a lot of those. I’d rather talk about books. I don’t except much "change" or any of that hocus pocus stump speech crap anytime soon.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty cool to have a president who loves Miles Davis.

Another disaster lies in hiring one reader to do all the book’s voices. DiMeo cites Jim Dale, who reads the Harry Potter series, as the rare talent who can successfully portray more than one character without sounding hammy. I recall David Sedaris doing this well too, but then, Sedaris is another rare talent.

My favourites so far have been the actual authors reading their work. Whether Barack Obama (Hmm, need to get a post up about that) or Richard Dawkins (currently listening to The God Delusion) I think I have had the most success when the author is also the reader.

Recently read: Middlemarch by George Eliot.

I mentioned a few weeks back having issues with abridged audio books of Eliot’s novels. While listening to The Mill On The Floss wasn’t too irritating due to my previous reading experience with it, having never read Middlemarch before I found the abridged audio book I listened to very confusing and difficult to follow. From what I gathered, this is a great novel but the jumps and edits in the narrative made the experience very unpleasurable.

I will revisit Middlemarch in print form soon.

Recently read: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast.

I’ve been meaning to read this book for a couple years ever since being introduced to Palast’s work. This book chronicles the treasonous fraud, more than usual, that was the 2000 presidential election. I decided to listen to the audio book of this book because not only does Palast read it, but other awesome people like Jello Biafra and Amy Goodman do as well.

Recently read: by George Eliot

I revisted Eliot’s novel as an audio book last spring. This is one of my favorite novels which I have read in the past few years. The audio book was abridged, but I did not notice any troublesome or confusing gaps in the text. As you will read here a few days from now, I had less success with another Eliot novel recently.

I ordered a copy of the audio version of this book after hearing about it so much on the This Week in Tech podcast, especially from John C. Dvorak. Perkins recalls his life as what he refers to as an economic hitman. He spent years in South America and other places working to meddle with their governments and people. The contents of this book are certainly no surprise, but nonetheless extremely disturbing. I am looking forward to listening to Perkin’s newish book, which is coming up in my audio books queue.

Recently read: To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

When I read this novel for a course a few years back, I was surprised by my lack of enjoyment. Woolf is one of my favorite writers, but it didn’t interest me that much. This time around, I thought I would try out the audio book and see if that was a better experience. I still didn’t like it that much. Oh well.

• Two links for Jean-Philippe Toussaint from The Quarterly Conversation: a nice interview and a review of Monsieur from Scott Esposito.
• Literary Kicks on Plato’s Republic.  Been thinking about Plato a lot lately because this is one of the audiobooks in my queue right now.
• My Twitter pal Samhita over at Feministing wonders if a restraining order is ever enough.
• The Guardian does a really cool interview with Herbie Hancock.  I need to check out his solo work; he played on my favorite Miles Davis record In A Silent Way.
• Judith Butler on the November election.